Fake News as a Threat to the Democratic Media Environment: Past Conditions of Media Regulation and Their Contemporary Applicability to New Media in the United States of America and South Korea

Abstract

This study uses a comparative case study policy analysis to evaluate whether the media regulation standards that the governments of the United States of America and South Korea used in the past apply to fake news on social media and the Internet today. We first identify the shared conditions based on which the two governments intervened in the free press. Then we examine media regulation laws regarding these conditions and review court cases in which they were utilized. In each section, we draw similarities and differences between the two governments’ courses of action. The comparative analysis will serve useful in the conclusion, where we assess the applicability of those conditions to fake news on new media platforms in each country and deliberate policy recommendations as well as policy flow between the two countries.